I was trying to book a one way flexible ticket CPT LHR for my sister the other day. [Why not miles? Because she couldn't guarantee to be able to change the flight by the day before.] On the UK version of ba.com one can book a one way ticket but when you come to pay for it you can't use Amex (for obvious reasons I very much wanted to use Amex ) because if you use Amex for a third party booking outside the UK Amex have to authorise it first. So I called Amex and had it authorised. But the Amex payment option reamained greyed out on ba.com.

So I call BA in the UK.

And I am quoted a fare about £350 lower in pounds than that on ba.com. In other words I would have to pay a higher price by phone than using the UK version of ba.com. Odd: this ought to be fixed. I query this and remind the agent that the journey nearly booked over the web was booking into C class. She assures me somewhat assertively but wrongly that all BA flexible Club fares are in J class and J class alone. So I leave it and book online using my AA Visa card instead. I suppose I could have called South Africa if I had been desparate to use Amex. But life is too short.

The purpose of this little tale is to wish everyone a happy Sunday and to inform that tiny minority who might find the informatation useful that you can't use Amex to pay for a thrid party booking online if the travel originates outside the country for which your Amex is registered - unless I assume you call BA in the originating country having got the charge authorised by Amex first.